CEO Sessions with Finance News Network

Jumbo Interactive Limited (ASX:JIN) is in the business of selling lottery tickets. The same lottery tickets that you buy on the street as Lotto Powerball, but we do it online. We do it via a website and via an app.

We sold our first ticket in 2000, so that’s16 years we’ve been at it. And over that time, we’ve grown our ticket sales to up over 150 million, and our customer database is now over two million. So it has grown quite considerably, still only represents about 13 per cent of the overall lottery play, so there’s still plenty of room for growth.

The ticket sales are obviously a highlight, 156 million. That’s a 20 per cent increase over the year before and a record for us. That filters down to a record revenue of $34.3 million for the year and then that has given us a seven-fold increase in our net profit after tax, to $4.67 million. So a good result and that has strengthened our balance sheet to net assets, of about $25 million. And our net cash is about $25 million as well. So puts us in a pretty good position going forward.

Constant improvements to our software platform; we develop all our software in-house. So our app, our website has really given a much better player experience and that has in turn, caused more activity for our players. Players are really enjoying using our app to play their favourite lottery game.

Some improvements to our online marketing have also helped increase the number of new players, that we have come into our system. And we also had a pretty good run of jackpots throughout the year, which also helps.

A result like that has enabled us to increase our dividend from three cents the previous year, to seven cents this year. So quite a good increase and that’s certainly made a few investors happy.

Since we’ve accumulated such a large database at the moment, we’re really working a lot in data mining. Really improving our technology and trying to make the most of our large database, and really activate as much of them as possible. So there are a lot of technological advances in that area.

In addition to that, the new thing that we have at the moment, are charity lotteries. A year ago we introduced three new games and we now have a fourth game, the Endeavour Foundation, which has joined our ranks. It just means our customers; they can buy tickets in Oz Lotto, Powerball, but they can also buy a ticket in a charity that they support. And that’s showing some early growth signs for us.

In 12 months, I’d like to break a few more records. We’d like to get our ticket sales up over 150 million, to keep our growth going. That will translate into higher revenue, higher profit after tax and of course higher dividends.